Singer Harry Belafonte, now 85, has engaged in a social activism of extraordinary breadth.

The Calypso singer, best known for "The Banana Boat Song" with its signature "Day-O" refrain, bailed Martin Luther King, Jr. out of the Birmingham City Jail and financed the Freedom Rides.

He joined the fight against AIDS in South Africa and was a sharp critic of the Bush Administration. In widely published remarks, he called Bush's Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice "house slaves," prompting public rebukes from both.

Belafonte was in Providence January 29 to offer the keynote speech at the end of a month-long celebration of King at RISD. The speech, "Artist as Activist," was as provocative as always — urging black America to get more involved in the gun control movement and asserting that President Bush "stole" the 2000 election, among other things.

Before he took the stage, Belafonte sat down for a brief interview with the Phoenix at RISD's Market House — his voice raspy, dignified, and ever-radical. The interview is edited and condensed.

YOUR TALK IS TITLED "ARTIST AS ACTIVIST." IT SEEMS THERE'S A DEARTH OF ACTIVISM THESE DAYS IN MUSIC, IN THE FINE ARTS, ON THE SCREEN. ARE YOU DISAPPOINTED? I think that there are some really small exceptions to that rule. I think Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball is an attempt by a very high-profile artist to make a social statement.

I think that the last outpouring of art and social consciousness really can be found during the 1960s, '50s, and so on. And well before that, because what we inherited in our day was art that had a sense of social purpose. Then came the great harvest of the post-civil rights period when everyone began to turn to meism. Most artists turned away from social activism. They were encouraged to, because if you are too outspoken, corporate America will silence you. They would not give you the platform for endorsements, they would not sponsor your shows. It's almost like an act of McCarthyism, censorship.

What's happened is that that contamination has taken over almost completely. The inordinate sums of money that people are paid for the work that they do has changed their whole sense of the mission of art.

Art has become an instrument of technology. All the things that you see are more about manipulating the technical device. The content is thrown away.

YOU APPEARED IN A CAMPAIGN COMMERCIAL FOR JFK IN 1960. CAN YOU IMAGINE DOING THAT FOR ANY PRESENT-DAY POLITICIAN? I'd gladly do it for every politician I met if they had [the] values, platform, and purpose that I thought commanded my support.

DOES ANYONE COMMAND THAT SUPPORT THESE DAYS? Barack Obama did. And in a way, he still does. But there are many questions here. We'll see what happens with his second term. I do believe if he fails, and we fail, to use this moment to take America to another level and to another set of values and objectives, we will have lost the ability to change this country in a way that it needs to. I think that we'll be just on an express to Hell. It's all too fast, it's much too much, it's all scattered — where we are and our sense of purpose.

Pressing Obama for an answer Convicted murderer Darrell Jones has accomplished more in the worlds of media, entertainment, and activism from behind bars over the past 25 years than most free people do in a lifetime.

Ghost stories For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.

Review: WFNX's Miracle on Tremont Street 2009 A quick, mildly sycophantic shout-out to the "powers that be" here in Phoenix -Land: This year's Miracle on Tremont Street was nothing short of a wicked pissah powerhouse bill. The grand old Orpheum creaked under the weight of a sold-out audience, and a pronounced feistiness prevailed .

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Beyond Dilla and Dipset With a semi-sober face I'll claim that hip-hop in 2010 might deliver more than just posthumous Dilla discs, Dipset mixtapes, and a new ignoramus coke rapper whom critics pretend rhymes in triple-entendres.

John Harbison plus 10 Classical music in Boston is so rich, having to pick 10 special events for this winter preview is more like one-tenth of the performances I'm actually looking forward to.

Interview: Raj Patel "The opposite of consumption is not thrift but generosity; if you look at happiness studies, we are happiest when we give things away rather than when we accumulate or when we don't spend."

Shout it out! Sharks Come Cruisin' founder Mark Lambert is a Warwick native with a penchant for reworking and penning sea shanties from centuries past, often revised with rollicking punk flare — all thanks to the golden pipes of Quint, the shark-obsessed skipper in Jaws .

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THE LIBERAL CASE FOR GUNS | March 27, 2013 The school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut spurred hope not just for sensible gun regulation, but for a more nuanced discussion of America's gun culture. Neither wish has been realized.